ATLANTA (AP) — Mentally ill patients often left Georgia’s state psychiatric hospitals with just a bus token and directions to a homeless shelter.

For people with disabilities, these same institutions became places of permanent confinement.

This is the system that Georgia, under pressure from the federal government, pledged seven years ago to radically overhaul. But with a court-enforced deadline fast approaching, the state increasingly seems unlikely to fulfill its promises.

Georgia has less than 14 months – until June 30, 2018 – to comply with a settlement it reached with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2010. The agreement followed an investigation that concluded the state had systematically violated the rights of people with mental illness and developmental disabilities.

But the state continues to discharge patients with mental illness to places where they are unlikely to get psychiatric treatment: extended-stay motels, for instance, and even the massive Peachtree-Pine homeless shelter in midtown Atlanta. All patients with disabilities are supposed to be moved into group homes or other community-based facilities, but at the current rate of progress, the state might not meet that requirement for another 10 years.

As officials try to comply with the agreement, they also are investigating an alarming number of deaths in community-based treatment: about 350 since 2014. Those apparently include five dozen suicides.

A court-appointed monitor credits the state with making many promised improvements, especially regarding crisis intervention and other services for people with mental illness.

Still, a grim picture emerges from the monitor’s most recent report, as well as from interviews and documents reviewed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

It is “absolutely essential” that the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disability “act with urgency to meet its obligations,” the monitor, Elizabeth Jones, wrote in late March in a report to U.S. District Judge Charles Pannell. “Although there has been noteworthy progress in certain discrete areas of implementation, the reform efforts require additional diligent and effective actions if compliance is to be achieved within the anticipated timeframe.”

Department officials declined to be interviewed.

In a statement, the agency did not say whether it expects to meet the deadlines next year. But the department said it is moving at “a reasonable pace” to move. “Transitions are carefully and individually planned to meet the unique needs and preferences of each individual and to provide the best opportunities for success in the community.”

The agency said it welcomed the monitor’s “reflections and recommendations.”
Neighbor News Online Updates

The Justice Department began investigating Georgia’s psychiatric hospitals in 2007 after a Journal-Constitution series, “A Hidden Shame,” exposed a pattern of poor medical care, abuse, neglect and bad management that had caused dozens of unnecessary deaths.

Transforming a historically troubled mental health system has been a slower process than perhaps anyone envisioned when state and federal authorities put together a plan. Already, a judge extended the deadline for compliance once, from 2015 to 2018.

The state has spent millions of dollars and reorganized the bureaucracy that oversees the hospitals and community treatment. It also closed two state hospitals, in Rome and Thomasville. All that’s left of Central State Hospital, the notorious facility in Milledgeville that once warehoused as many as 12,000 people, is a unit for people committed through the criminal justice system.

In past years, the state hospitals, especially Georgia Regional Hospital/Atlanta, sent scores of newly discharged patients to locations where continued treatment seemed unlikely: homeless shelters, street corners, even an abandoned van on a street in Atlanta’s West End.

But from 2016 to 2017, according to the monitor’s report, the hospitals cut discharges to homeless shelters by half. At the same time, however, the number of patients placed in extended-stay motels quadrupled.

During a 12:30 p.m. press conference today, Russell R. McMurry, Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Transportation; Mark W. McDonough, Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Safety; Joel Baker, Fire Chief of the City of Atlanta Fire Department; Keith Parker, CEO of MARTA and Chris Tomlinson, Executive Director of GRTA/SRTA addressed the media and public with updates about the investigation into the I-85 bridge collapse and what commuters can expect going forward. The following is information released at the conference:

-About 700 ft of the bridge will need to rebuilt. This includes about 350 ft on the northbound side and 350 ft on the southbound side. McMurry said the project will take “several months.”

-According to McMurry, the materials stored under the bridge were “common construction products, conduit and PVC plastic.” He emphasized that the materials were noncombustible and had been stored in that area since around 2006. McMurry also stated that “it is not an uncommon practice to store [those materials] under bridges.

-When asked why the materials got hot enough to cause the bridge to collapse, Baker responded, “it was due to the amount of materials involved, which generated a lot of heat.”
Neighbor News Online Updates

-McDonough said there would be no way to “produce detours on city streets,” and that drivers need to start planning alternate routes to avoid I-85. He described the current traffic plan as, “simple: use I-285.”

-MARTA ridership has seen a 25 percent surge and there has been an 80 percent increase in sales which Parker noted is proof that people are “preparing to find alternate transportation methods.” MARTA extended more trains this morning and will increase the amount of service they run during the weekends. Parker also said that Park-n-Ride lots are filling up in and around metro-Atlanta.

Check back with Neighbor News Online for more updates.

That’s one hell of a way to get people in Georgia to give up driving, collapse the bridges.

Like this:

The property next door, changed hands, and I cannot in good conscious, continue with the old stories about the property. Who knows where Robert (previous owner) went, or what happened to him. We have a good idea, but without any kind of evidence, I dare not say more. I will update as soon as I have something nice to say. Mama always said, “If you can’t say nothing nice, don’t say anything at all”. I personally added, unless you have the proof.

Unless and until things move along, it would be best if I get rid of all the inferences to criminal owners and illegal acts, etc. That way, I cannot be accused of slandering, defaming, libeling the new owners of the property. I will say, that the property had changed hands in May 2015, but change of ownership was not recorded into DeKalb County Georgia Records, until July 2015.

They have the house boarded up, but that does not mean there is no work being done over there, or that no one is planning to pick up harrassing us where DiNapoli left off. Only time will tell. We been here almost 21 years now, we ain’t going nowhere.

I will be revamping my blog, Keep a heads up yall, Fukushima is still killing us softly and slowly.

What I am searching for, is anyone in Georgia that has been, is in the middle of, or will be in foreclosure, in which at any time during their loan, Konaur Capital Corp. was either Lender, Servicer, Assignee, or Assignor.

If anyone in Georgia has ever had Kondaur involved with their loan/loan documents,

Please respond here to this post, or contact me any other way, but contact me…

Ernst, who has served on the Board of Ethics since June 2013, stepped down a day after the board reprimanded Commissioner Stan Watson for voting to award a county contract to his employer.

“When I joined the board over two years ago, we had a budget of $16,000, lacked full membership, were in a suspended state and had a number of old and languishing complaints,” Ernst wrote in his resignation letter. “Today, I’m proud to say that we have dealt with dozens of complaints and have a more robust budget for counsel and investigators to root out unethical behavior.”

Clara Black DeLay, the board’s vice chairwoman, will replace Ernst as its chairwoman.